This blog will highlight key EPM market trends, recent events and other news of interest to our field, customers and partners.

Monday Oct 28, 2013

Our workplace world is definitely changing. Not only are we taking work home, but we are working during odd hours in some very strange places. I had the pleasure of interviewing Jacques Vigeant, Product Strategy Manager for Oracle Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management, on a Podcast, and he enlightened me about how our mobile devices and business scorecards are enabling us to be more accountable and keep a watchful eye on business – even while on the golf course.

Business scorecards have been around for many years - so I asked Jacques if he felt they had changed significantly due to technology. His answer was, “Yes, and no.” Jacques agreed that scorecard enthusiasts are still passionate about executing the company strategy and monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), but scorecards and Business Intelligence (BI) as a whole have changed. He explained that five to six years ago, people did BI work at the office and, for the most part, disconnected from their computer and workplace when they went home – with the exception of checking email and making a phone call or two. But now, that is no longer the case. People are virtually always connected with work and, more importantly, expect their BI and scorecards to be ‘always on,’ regardless of whether they are at their desk or somewhere else.

Basically, the BI paradigm has changed from a 'pull' model, where employees are at their desks querying or pulling information from the system, to a 'push' model where employees expect their BI and scorecard systems to reach out (or push information) to them when there is something of note to learn or something on which they need to take action.

I found this very interesting. However mobile devices do have their limitations with respect to screen sizes – does it really make sense to look at your strategy/scorecard on tiny devices? What kind of scorecard activities can you really expect to be able to do? Jacques’ answer was very logical. “When you think of a scorecard, it is really comprised of an organization of KPIs that are aligned with the strategic objectives of your company. KPIs are the heart of how you will execute your strategy. So, if you decompose that a little more, each KPI is well defined with the thresholds that you should keep an eye on and who is responsible for them. When we talk about scorecarding on a phone, we aren’t talking about surfing the strategy and exploring the strategy map like we do on the desktop. In a scorecarding context, we use the phone more as an alerting mechanism or simple monitoring device for your KPIs.”

Jacques gave a great example of an inventory manager who took part of an afternoon off to go golfing before winter finally hit, and while on the front nine holes, his phone vibrated. His scorecard was alerting him that the inventory levels for one of the products was below some threshold that he had set. From his phone, he had set up three options within Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management (OSSM) for this type of situation:

1. Contact the warehouse manager directly by phone and work it out (standard phone function) 2. Tap/hold the KPI and add an annotation to the KPI in OSSM using the dictation capabilities of the phone and deal with it more fully when he gets back to the office 3. Tap/hold the KPI and invoke a business process from OSSM to transfer product from another warehouse with higher stock levels to the one that needs it

Being on a phone should still give you options to quickly deal with situations as needed, but mobile phones are not designed for nor should try to replicate the full desktop experience.

We covered other interesting subjects in the interview, including how Oracle is keeping pace with mobile innovation and new devices such as Google Glasses, Galaxy Gear, Pebble Watches and more, and how Oracle is handling mobile security– which is great news for our mobile workforce.

To listen to the entire Podcast, click here.To learn more about Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management, click here.

Friday Feb 01, 2013

If you are new to the world of Business Scorecards – Welcome! If you have been at it for a while, it might be time to have another look at what your scorecard is doing for you.

Jacques Vigeant, Product Strategy Director for Oracle Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management, was interviewed in a podcast by Nigel Youell, Director of Product Marketing for Oracle Performance Management Applications, and had a very interesting discussion about the business value that scorecards add to dashboards. To listen to the podcast click here.

To summarize, Jacques explained that dashboards are really about monitoring organizational metrics, usually including data that has been rolled up by dimensions relative to the business. Typically they are single page dials and graphs that give you information about trends and data in a point in time. Very useful for keeping track of what has happened. Whereas scorecards can provide a huge amount of business value by supplying additional information about how those metrics are related to the business strategy, which metrics are particularly important, what impact a particular metric has on the strategy, and who is accountable for the metric. This additional information enables employees to better evaluate their own impact on strategy and effect real change based on the metrics and initiatives they can influence.

According to Jacques, not all metrics are created equal. Some have a much bigger impact on strategic outcomes than others. For example, the number of units sold is a good metric to watch, but the profit on those units sold is MORE important. Importance can be seen through weightings placed on metrics relative to the strategy, and through maps showing how each of the metrics are related – cause and effect style.

The BIG news however is how scorecard functionality is changing, and Oracle is investing here.Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management, or OSSM, has taken better decision making very seriously. Oracle has introduced the concept of ‘actions’ and invoking those actions based on who is viewing the scorecard (position in the organization) and which metric they are viewing. If a value has gone wrong (or very right) a list of suggestions – based on the individual viewing the metric – can be presented to the user. In some cases, it is appropriate to automatically invoke a business process, trigger a workflow or initiate a job requisition based on a metric result value. In other words, intelligence can be built in to assist employees to make better business decisions every day. In addition, employees can support each other even more in making better business decisions through written collaboration and annotations on metrics and initiatives and what is happening to improve them.

Finally, reporting has changed to improve understanding of how each metric contributes to the organizational strategy.Strategy maps show relationships between objectives, but can also show relationships to specific metrics. The ‘contribution wheel’, a patented graphic that Jacques himself designed, beautifully depicts how each metric and initiative contributes to the overall strategy in one graphic.

So as you can see, Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management is not your father’s scorecard. It has moved on to enabling managers and business leaders to see the impact of initiatives and metrics on the organizational strategy and, more importantly, helping to modify the behavior of employees to make better business decisions every day. At the end of the day, Oracle Scorecard and Strategy management can help provide enough business context so that everyone can make better business decisions every day. When this happens, achieving organizational goals and strategy is possible!